Secret Police

* Rebel intelligence unit formally set up in November * Says it will not act like Assad's feared security agencies * Some fear it will pursue own agenda if Assad falls By Mariam Karouny BEIRUT, Jan 10 (Reuters) - Just the mention of the word would send shivers down the spine of Syrians: "mukhabarat", or secret police. Abuses by President Bashar al-Assad's feared security units were among the reasons Syrians took to the streets in March 2011, leading to an...

* Babis fights accusations of secret police collaboration * Parties mull ending screening to let him join government * Czechs more tolerant almost 25 years after Communism ended By Jan Lopatka PRAGUE, Dec 4 (Reuters) - When Czechs threw off Communism in 1989, they adopted strict rules marginalising anyone with ties to the repressive old regime. But now they are asking whether it's time to move on. The soul-searching has been stirred by...

The leader of the Tontons Macoutes, Haiti's feared secret police, was a short suburban housewife who liked good whiskey, expensive art, fine furniture --and killing people, Haitians say. Rosale Adolph, a 62-year-old woman who answered to the nickname "Madam Max," has not been seen since President-for-Life Jean-Claude Duvalier fled Haiti for France last Friday after several months of violent antigovernment protests. But Adolph was the most hated woman in Haiti--and many Haitians...

What? Do even Latin American caudillos die? Apparently, according to the latest and last medical bulletin on the health (or lack thereof) of Hugo Chavez, perpetually re-electable president of Venezuela. No doubt many Venezuelans are grieving at the news that he has proven mortal. It ought to be quite a wake or celebration, depending on which Venezuelans are observing the occasion. No doubt those of both persuasions will be sincere, as many Russians mourned the death of their generalissimo when...

Thousands of angry East Germans on Monday stormed headquarters of the secret police, smashing windows, threatening staff, ransacking offices and hurling furniture out the windows. The demonstrators, angry at government delays in disbanding the hated agency, ended their rampage after Prime Minister Hans Modrow and opposition leaders appealed for restraint. Thousands of factory workers in East Berlin, Jena, Gera, Karl-Marx-Stadt and Zwickau also downed their tools in a...

BERLIN (Reuters) - German prosecutors have opened preliminary proceedings against Gregor Gysi, one of the Left party's key election campaign figures, over allegations he lied about links with the former East German secret police, the politician said on Sunday. Gysi, who leads the Left party's parliamentary group, has repeatedly faced allegations in the past two decades that as a lawyer in former East Germany he passed information on clients - some of them known...

As warm summer weather finally settles on the Czech capital, heat of a different kind is giving some politicians and business leaders cause to sweat. After two months of rain, cool temperatures and relative political quiet, local newspapers and commentators are making the most of what is being billed as the biggest scandal to rock the country since the overthrow of communism in 1989. A former member of the hated communist secret police is accused of selling a leading...

* FBI sees no credible threat for event * Between 600,000 and 800,000 people expected By Deborah Charles WASHINGTON, Jan 15 (Reuters) - The U.S. Secret Service said it hopes to balance security with pragmatism during upcoming inauguration festivities, making changes to prevent a repeat of 2009, when thousands of people got stuck in a tunnel and never saw President Barack Obama's swearing in. Less than a week before the Jan. 21 inauguration, the Secret ...

East Germany's Stasi secret police no longer exist, but they haunt the country's life in its dying days. Accusations that members of parliament, and even some Cabinet ministers, collaborated with the Stasi have become rife as East Germany approaches unification with West Germany on Oct. 3. On Monday, a leader of the Green Party, Henry Schramm, resigned after admitting that he had spied on the environmental movement for years. He said he had been forced by threats of violence...

* Rebel intelligence unit formally set up in November * Says it will not act like Assad's feared security agencies * Some fear it will pursue own agenda if Assad falls By Mariam Karouny BEIRUT, Jan 10 (Reuters) - Just the mention of the word would send shivers down the spine of Syrians: "mukhabarat", or secret police. Abuses by President Bashar al-Assad's feared security units were among the reasons Syrians took to the streets in March 2011, leading to an...

During an address to his people, Romanian Premier Nicolae Ceausescu promised that he would lead them back into what he called "the golden dream of communism." Like most of us, I didn`t know there was such a thing. So I spoke to a Romanian Gypsy violinist who plays at the Georgetown Tea Room down the street. "Do you remember living in the golden dream of communism?" I asked. "I remember it well," he answered. "We lined up in one town to buy a chicken being sold in the next town.

* Former mosque imam moved to Cairo three weeks ago * Alkhatib seen playing post-Assad role promoting unity * Says Assad not weak, but strength is shrinking By Tom Perry CAIRO, July 26 (Reuters) - A leading Syrian cleric turned opposition activist says his country needs his message of sectarian unity more than ever as the revolt against President Bashar al-Assad turns bloodier. "I want the Syrian people to remain as one hand," Sheikh Mouaz Alkhatib...

Colombia's former chief of the secret police was arrested Friday on charges of colluding with paramilitary death squads. Jorge Noguera had been freed from jail three months ago due to procedural errors with this arrest. This time, the arrest was requested by Colombia's attorney general, Mario Iguaran, who ordered Noguera held in a maximum security jail on accusations of working with and passing information along to banned paramilitaries. Noguera ran Colombia's secret police,...

By Ros Krasny BOSTON, July 12 (Reuters) - Maine's Republican governor ignited a fresh firestorm on Thursday when, for the second time in a week, he compared the Internal Revenue Service to the Gestapo, Nazi Germany's murderous secret police. Democrats suggested that Governor Paul LePage, a Tea Party favorite elected in 2010, was unfit to hold office. LePage had already been called out by Democrats, Jewish groups and others in the northeast U.S....

A former secret police chief has been charged with murdering three leftists during the "dirty war" prosecuted by the Mexican government from the late 1960s into the 1980s, in what may be the beginnings of a breakthrough for the rule of law in Mexico. Federal prosecutors brought the charges against Luis de la Barreda Moreno, chief of the once-feared Federal Security Directorate from 1970 to 1977. At least 275 people, perhaps twice that number, disappeared during the dirty war. De la...

Germany dropped three officials from its Winter Olympics team because of ties to the former East Germany's secret police. An investigation by Germany's Olympic committee found nine of 162 officials considered for next month's Turin Games had connections to the Stasi. Six were cleared because their ties were considered minor. The three dropped officials were coaches, according to German media. - Michelle Kwan must prove she is fit for the Turin Olympics on Friday, when a...